orange peel mushrooms

Mushrooms

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Mushrooms are fruiting bodies of fungi.

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Some mushrooms are edible, but never eat a mushroom that you have not identified.

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Mushrooms can be foraged from spring though late fall.

Mushrooms might look strange, but they are an integral part of Earth's ecosystem. There are more than a million identified species of them on our planet, but they share many characteristics. The world would be a very different place without mushrooms (also called toadstools) for many reasons. They are eaten as food and used in medicines. They also recycle dead organic matter, like animals and leaves, and return the material back to the soil.

rosy mushroom
Oyster mushrooms

Photo credit: Molly hicks

Photo 1. Orange peel fungus

Photo 2. Rosy russula

Photo 3. Oyster mushroom